The present invention generally relates to an manipulator apparatus and more particularly, to a control arrangement for an industrial robot capable of teaching a continuous path operation, and also playing back such operation thereby.
For teaching and playing back the continuous path operation as referred to above in an industrial robot, there has conventionally been employed a practice in which an operator directly holds the forward end of the robot for movement thereof so as to cause the robot to draw its operating loci, during which period, rotational angles of respective driving shafts of said robot per each predetermined period of time are detected for storing, whereby during play back, the rotational angles of the respective driving shafts of the robot as memorized are taken out per each predetermined period of time for operation target positions to be given to the robot as operation instructing values therefor, thereby to cause the robot to function as desired.
In the known practice as described above, however, there has been such a problem that, during play back, the industrial robot functions only at a speed in a constant multiple of the speed at the path teaching when said robot was directly moved by the operator for the teaching. In other word, variation in the operating speed by the operator during the teaching also appears in the operation for the play back as variation in the speed. Accordingly, during teaching, the operator must perform the teaching by taking the operating speed also into consideration, besides accurateLy tracing the desired path. By way of example, it is very difficult to teach an operation required to maintain a constant operating speed over a curve as in a sealing agent applying work for uniformly applying a sealing agent on a predetermined path.